Leading tech analyst Gartner, has included Corso in their latest Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools report, as a digital business platform for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). Although the Corso platform is well suited to accommodating large organizations, Gartner cite agile, user-friendly and structured approaches to enterprise architecture, as well as affordable pricing models, as a great tool to help cope with the gearing up in digital business.
Martin Owen, CEO at Corso understandably took pride at the acknowledgement.
“We’re excited about how Gartner are seeing the future of the EA market,” he said. “It’s an exciting time and one of rapid change where digital business is effecting the manner in which enterprise architects are used within organizations.
“Modern, Agile enterprise architecture tools such as ours address ideation and innovation through quick, lean and highly structured approaches to EA. Gartner also see that, as well as traditional organizations, the pricing and availability of SaaS makes these tools attractive to small and medium organizations.”
The analysts even went as far to say, that the importance of EA tools across the board is likely to increase in correlation with the digital business push, as stakeholders will place more emphasis on EA based planning, analysis and execution.
The claims are further substantiated by polls carried out by the world leaders in information technology research, with 59% of IT leaders agreeing, and that the emphasis on EA based planning will last at least through 2017.
Gartner expect businesses to leverage the numerous arms of digital business platforms, including modeling, ideation and innovation, and application portfolio management, among others. Leveraging these modules is a sure fire way for a business to position itself strategically to achieve it’s business outcomes.
Gartner also pointed out that the platform providers involved in the research, were all System as a Software based (SaaS/Cloud hosted). Some business owners might meet this with precaution, but the benefits of SaaS are far too prolific to ignore.
If you’re one of the aforementioned business owners, a best practice to consider, is to keep an eye out for data handling certifications such as ISO 27001, which indicate a company takes your data seriously, and has the necessary systems in place to maintain it.
“Corso are one of the only vendors to be ISO27001 certified which enables it to address cyber-security and data privacy risk concerns which in turn gives customers extra confidence in web and cloud based offerings.” – Martin Owen, CEO at Corso
Considering ITs refocusing on enterprise architecture and related disciplines, it’s worth then, looking into the likely reasons for the change.
The prime catalyst has to be technology’s main stage rival in business. Whether an organization’s commodities themselves are tech based, or the systems behind selling and support, technology and related departments have a lot more say in the day to day, and future running of a business.
Naturally, technology’s new position demands more attention. Previously, IT departments were centered around keeping on the lights, and cutting the costs behind keeping on said lights. Now those departments have to juggle traditional IT tasks, along with newer IT responsibilities such as innovation.
Additionally, digital business platforms have to be geared towards accommodating collaboration (sharing and cooperating on information), common repository and Agile, lean principles and iterative development.
That’s why Gartner are forecasting a new enterprise architecture and digital business platform push. And the businesses that catch on to the refined, and realigned focus of Agile EA in particular, will find it’s essential to coping with what for many, will be significant and daunting, yet essential change.